Coloured vote constitutional crisis
The Coloured vote constitutional crisis known as the Coloured vote case, was a constitutional crisis that occurred in the Union of South Africa during the 1950s as the result of an attempt by the Nationalist government to remove Coloured voters in the Union's Cape Province from the common voters' rolls. It developed into a dispute between Parliament and the judiciary, on the one hand, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, on the other hand, over the power of Parliament to amend an entrenched clause in the South Africa Act and the power of the Appellate Division to overturn the amendment as unconstitutional; the crisis ended when the government enlarged the Senate and altered its method of election, allowing the amendment to be enacted. Before the creation of the Union of South Africa, elections in the Cape Colony were conducted on the basis of the qualified franchise; this meant that the right to vote was limited to men meeting property and literacy qualifications, but not restricted on the basis of race.
This differed from the other South African colonies: in Natal the franchise was limited to white men in practise though not in law, while in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony the franchise was limited by law to white men. The South Africa Act, an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, unified these four colonies to form the Union but preserved their franchise arrangements unchanged. Section 35 of the South Africa Act provided that no law could disenfranchise voters in the Cape Province on the basis of race, unless that law was passed by an absolute supermajority of two-thirds of the members of both Houses of Parliament sitting together in a joint session. Section 35 was entrenched by section 152, which provided that neither section 35 nor section 152 itself could be amended without a similar supermajority in joint session. In 1931, the Statute of Westminster ended the power of the British Parliament to legislate for dominions such as South Africa and gave those dominions the power to repeal or amend British laws in force within their territories.
In 1936, the South African Parliament enacted the Representation of Natives Act, removing "native" voters from the common voters' rolls and allowing them to elect, three members of the House of Assembly instead. Although this Act was passed by the required joint-session supermajority, its validity was challenged by an affected voter in the case of Ndlwana v Hofmeyr; the challenge was rejected for a number of reasons, of which the most significant was the Appellate Division's ruling that because Parliament was a sovereign legislative body, courts could not invalidate one of its Acts on the basis of the procedure used to pass it. In 1948, the National Party, campaigning on a platform of apartheid, won that year's general election; the following year, Prime Minister D. F. Malan addressed the question of Coloured voting rights in a speech to Parliament, claiming that Coloured voters were corrupt and immature and that they posed a threat to white control in South Africa; the government sought to echo the 1936 Representation of Natives Act by introducing, in 1951, the Separate Representation of Voters Bill, whereby Coloured voters would lose the right to vote for ordinary constituency members of the House of Assembly and instead elect four members at separate elections.
Besides the Nationalists' ideological belief in white supremacy, the bill was motivated by the electoral power of Coloured voters to swing a number of Cape constituencies from the National Party to the United Party. The bill attracted much opposition both outside Parliament; the United Party leader J. G. N. Strauss was against it both because he saw it as a breach of commitments given by earlier National Party leaders and because he believed it would lead Coloured people to form political alliances with black and Indian groups opposed to the white control of South Africa. A group of Coloured activists formed the National Convention Co-ordinating Committee to oppose the bill within constitutional limits; the Franchise Action Council, a multi-racial organisation, led a campaign of rallies and civil disobedience. The Torch Commando was founded by white Second World War veterans in response to the bill but expanded into a more general movement against the government's policies; the National Party did not have enough seats in Parliament to pass the bill with the two-thirds majority in joint sitting that would be required if the entrenchment of sections 36 and 152 was still valid.
Based on the ruling in Ndlwana's case and the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, Malan's government decided to enact it by following the normal parliamentary procedure of a simple majority in each house separately. The Governor-General gave his assent on 15 June 1951 and the act was promulgated on 18 June. G. Harris, E. Franklin, W. D. Collins and E. A. Deane, four voters affected by the Separate Representation of Voters Act, challenged its validity in the Supreme Court in a case that became known as Harris v Dönges or Harris v Minister of the Interior, as T. E. Dönges was at the time Minister of the Interior; the case was dismissed by the Cape Provincial Division, which followed the precedent of Ndlwana v Hofmeyr to rule that the court had no authority to question the validity of an act of Parliament promulgated and published by the proper authority. This decision was taken on appeal to the Appellate Division; the government's first contention was that the act did not disqualify voters on the basis of race, as all voters qualified were still able to vote, albeit in segregated constituencies.
The court dismissed this argument as untenable. The government argued that the entrenched clauses in the South Africa Act had been
1948 South African general election
The parliamentary election in South Africa on 26 May 1948 represented a turning point in the country's history. The United Party, which had led the government since its foundation in 1933, its leader, incumbent Prime Minister Jan Smuts, were ousted by the Reunited National Party, led by Daniel François Malan, a Dutch Reformed cleric. During the election battle, both the UP and the NP formed coalitions with smaller parties; the UP was aligned with the left-leaning Labour Party, while the Afrikaner Party sought to advance Afrikaner rights by allying with the HNP. By legislation relating to franchise requirements few people of Coloured and Asian descent were able to vote in this election; the HNP, realising that many White South Africans felt threatened by black political aspirations, pledged to implement a policy of strict racial segregation in all spheres of living. The Nationalists labelled this new system of social organisation "apartheid", the name by which it became universally known; the HNP took advantage of white fear of black-on-white crime, the HNP promised whites safety and security from black-on-white crime and violence.
In contrast to the HNP's consistent, straightforward platform, the UP supported vague notions of integrating the different racial groups within South Africa. Furthermore, white dissatisfaction with domestic and economic problems in South Africa after World War II, the HNP's superior organisation, electoral gerrymandering, all proved to be significant challenges to the UP campaign; the election marked the onset of 46 years of NP rule in South Africa. Together, the HNP and the Afrikaner Party won 79 seats in the House of Assembly against a combined total of 74 won by the UP and the Labour Party. By a quirk of the First Past the Post system the NP had won more seats though the UP had received over eleven percent more votes; the Nationalist coalition subsequently formed a new government and ushered in the era of formal binding apartheid. In 1951, the HNP and the Afrikaner Party merged. One of the central issues facing the white electorate in the 1948 election was that of race; the United Party and the National Party presented voters with differing answers to questions relating to racial integration in South Africa.
Smuts and his followers were in favour of a pragmatic approach, arguing that racial integration was inevitable and that the government should thus relax regulations which sought to prevent black people from moving into urban areas. Whilst still seeking to maintain white dominance, the UP argued in favour of reforming the political system so that black South Africans could at some unspecified point in the future, exercise some sort of power in a racially integrated South Africa. In contrast to this vague ideology, the NP advanced the notion of further enforced segregation between races and the total disempowerment of black South Africans. Rural to urban movement by blacks was to be discouraged; the UP position was supported by the Fagan Commission while the Sauer Commission informed the NP's stance. The putative policy of apartheid proposed by the NP served the economic interests of certain groups of white South Africans. Farmers from the northern portions of the country relied on cheap black labour to maximise profits while working class whites living in urban areas feared the employment competition that would follow an urban influx of black South Africans.
Many commercial and financial Afrikaner interests based on agriculture saw the value of apartheid in promoting growth in this sector. The UP failed to realise the enormous economic benefits of apartheid to these large and influential groups and did not prioritise segregation as much as the NP; as regards election tactics, the NP was adroit at exploiting white fears while campaigning in the 1948 election. Because the UP had seemed to take a lukewarm stance towards both integration and segregation, the NP was able to argue that a victory for the UP would lead to a black government in South Africa. NP propaganda linked black political power to Communism, an anathema to many white South Africans at the time. Slogans such as "Swart Gevaar", "Rooi Gevaar", "Die kaffer op sy plek", "Die koelies uit die land" played upon and amplified white anxieties. Much was made of the fact that Smuts had developed a good working relationship with Joseph Stalin during World War II, when South Africa and the USSR were allies in the fight against Nazi Germany.
Smuts had once remarked that he "doffs his cap to Stalin" and the NP presented this remark as proof of Smuts’s latent Communist tendencies. The Smuts government's controversial immigration programme served to further inflame Afrikaner disquiet. Under this programme, numerous British immigrants had moved to South Africa and were perceived to have taken homes and employment away from South African citizens. Moreover, it was claimed that the intention behind such plans was to swamp the Afrikaners, who had a higher birth rate than the British diaspora, with British immigrants so that Afrikaners would be outnumbered at the polls in future elections. In preparation for the 1948 election, the NP moderated its stance on republicanism; because of the immense and abiding national trauma caused by the Anglo-Boer War, transforming South Africa into a republic and dissolving all ties between South Africa and the United Kingdom had been an important mission for earlier incar
Negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa
The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of negotiations between 1990 and 1993 and through unilateral steps by the de Klerk government. These negotiations took place between the governing National Party, the African National Congress, a wide variety of other political organisations. Negotiations took place against a backdrop of political violence in the country, including allegations of a state-sponsored third force destabilising the country; the negotiations resulted in South Africa's first non-racial election, won by the African National Congress. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South African government, it was formalised in 1948, forming a framework for political and economic dominance by the white population and restricting the political rights of the black majority. Between 1960 and 1990, the African National Congress and other black opposition political organisations were banned; as the National Party cracked down on black opposition to apartheid, most leaders of ANC and other opposition organisations were either killed, imprisoned or went into exile.
However, increasing local and international pressure on the government, as well as the realisation that apartheid could neither be maintained by force forever nor overthrown by the opposition without considerable suffering led both sides to the negotiating table. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale created a window of opportunity to create the enabling conditions for a negotiated settlement, recognized by Dr Niel Barnard of the National Intelligence Service. On 4 January 1974, Harry Schwarz, leader of the liberal-reformist wing of the United Party, met with Gatsha Buthelezi, Chief Executive Councillor of the black homeland of KwaZulu, signed a five-point plan for racial peace in South Africa, which came to be known as the Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith; the declaration stated that "the situation of South Africa in the world scene as well as internal community relations requires, in our view, an acceptance of certain fundamental concepts for the economic and constitutional development of our country".
The declaration's purpose was to provide a blueprint for government of South Africa for racial peace in South Africa. It called for negotiations involving all peoples, in order to draw up constitutional proposals stressing opportunity for all with a Bill of Rights to safeguard these rights, it suggested. It affirmed that political change must take place through non-violent means; the declaration was the first of such agreements by acknowledged black and white political leaders in South Africa that affirmed to these principles. The commitment to the peaceful pursuit of political change was declared at a time when neither the National Party nor the African National Congress were looking to peaceful solutions or dialogue; the declaration was heralded by the English speaking press as a breakthrough in race relations in South Africa. Shortly after it was issued, the declaration was endorsed by several chief ministers of the black homelands, including Cedric Phatudi, Lucas Mangope and Hudson Nisanwisi.
Despite considerable support from black leaders, the English speaking press and liberal figures such as Alan Paton, the declaration saw staunch opposition from the National Party, the Afrikaans press and the conservative wing of Harry Schwarz's United Party. The first meetings between the South African Government and Nelson Mandela were driven by the National Intelligence Service under the leadership of Niel Barnard and his Deputy Director General, Mike Louw; these meetings were secret in nature and were designed to develop an understanding about whether there were sufficient common grounds for future peace talks. As these meetings evolved, a level of trust developed between the key actors. To facilitate future talks while preserving secrecy needed to protect the process, Barnard arranged for Mandela to be moved off Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison in 1982; this provided Mandela with more comfortable lodgings, but gave easier access in a way that could not be compromised. Barnard therefore brokered an initial agreement in principle about what became known as "talks about talks".
It was at this stage that the process was elevated from a secret engagement to a more public engagement. The first less-tentative meeting between Mandela and the National Party government came while P. W. Botha was State President. In November 1985, Minister Kobie Coetsee met Mandela in the hospital while Mandela was being treated for prostate surgery. Over the next four years, a series of tentative meetings took place, laying the groundwork for further contact and future negotiations, but little real progress was made, the meetings remained secret until several years later; as the secret talks bore fruit and the political engagement started to take place, the National Intelligence Service withdrew from centre stage in the process, moved to a new phase of operational support work. This new phase was designed to test public opinion about a negotiated solution. Central to this planning was an initiative that became known in Security Force circles as the Dakar Safari, which saw a number of prominent Afrikaner opinion-makers engage with the African National Congress in Dakar and Leverkusen, Germany at events organized by the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa.
The operational objective of this meeting was not to understand the opinions of the actors themselves—that was well known at this stage within strategic management circles—but rather to gauge public opinion about a movement away from the previous security posture of confrontation
Black Sash
The Black Sash was a non-violent liberal white women's resistance organisation, founded on 19 May 1955 in South Africa by Jean Sinclair, Ruth Foley, Elizabeth McLaren, Tertia Pybus, Jean Bosazza, Helen Newton-Thompson. The Black Sash was founded on 19 May 1955 by six middle-class women, Jean Sinclair, Ruth Foley, Elizabeth McLaren, Tertia Pybus, Jean Bosazza and Helen Newton-Thompson; the organisation was founded as the Women’s Defence of the Constitution League but was shortened by the press as the Black Sash due to the women's habit of wearing black sashes at their protest meetings. These black sashes symbolised the mourning for the South Africa Constitution; the founding members gathered for tea in Johannesburg before they decided to organise a movement against the Senate Act. They succeeded to hold a vigil of 2 000 women who marched from Joubert Park to the Johannesburg City Hall; the Black Sash campaigned against the removal of Coloured or mixed race voters from the voters' roll in the Cape Province by the National Party government.
As the apartheid system began to reach into every aspect of South African life, Black Sash members demonstrated against the Pass Laws and the introduction of other apartheid legislation. It would open Advice Offices to provide information concerning their legal rights to non-white South African's affected by that legislation, its members "used the relative safety of their privileged racial classification to speak out against the erosion of human rights in the country. Their striking black sashes were worn as a mark of mourning and to protest against the succession of unjust laws, but they were not only on the streets. Volunteers spent many hours in the national network of advice offices and in the monitoring of courts and pass offices." Between 1955 and 1994, the Black Sash provided widespread and visible proof of white resistance towards the apartheid system. Its members worked as volunteer advocates to families affected by apartheid laws. Many members were vilified within their local white communities, it was not unusual for women wearing the black sash to be physically attacked by supporters of apartheid.
In the 1980s it was part of the National Land Committee assisting the non-white communities that were subject to forced land removals. It would be involved on the Rural Women's Movement, supporting rural non-white women rights in regards to inheritance and land ownership. In 1983, the organisation called for the abolition of military conscription. Ruth Foley 1955 - 1957 Molley Petersen 1958 - 1959 Eulalie Doreen Stott 1960 - 1961 Jean Sinclair 1961 – 1975 Sheena Duncan 1976 – 1978 Joyce Harris 1979 - 1982 Sheena Duncan 1983 – 1986 Maria Macdiarmid "Mary" Burton 1987 – 1990 Jennifer de Tolly 1991 – 1994 The Black Sash's resistance movement came to an end in the early 1990s with the end of apartheid, the unbanning of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela from imprisonment, its role was recognised by subsequent political leaders. The organisation was reformed in 1995 as a non-racial humanitarian organisation, working to'make human rights real for all living in South Africa'. In May 2015, the organisation celebrated its 60th anniversary as it shifted its focus towards education, training and community monitoring.
The celebration of the Black Sash history was marked by the launching of two books, namely Standing on Street Corners: a History of the Natal Midlands Region of the Black Sash and a biography by Annemarie Hendrikz. Sandra Botha Sheena Duncan Ruth Hayman Mary Renault Helen Zille Official website Bernstein, H. 1975. For their triumphs and for their tears - Women in Apartheid South Africa, International Defence & Aid Fund, United Kingdom. A small collection of Black Sash papers can be found at the Borthwick Institute, University of York UCT Libraries Digital Collections - Black Sash Collection
Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality, its Zulu name umGungundlovu is the name used for the district municipality. Pietermaritzburg is popularly called Maritzburg in English and Zulu alike, informally abbreviated to PMB, it is a regionally important industrial hub, producing aluminium and dairy products, as well as the main economic hub of Umgungundlovu District Municipality. The public sector is a major employer in the city due to the local and provincial governments being located here, it is home to many schools and tertiary education institutions, including a campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It had a population of 228,549 in 1991; the city was founded by the Voortrekkers, following the defeat of Dingane at the Battle of Blood River, was the capital of the short-lived Boer republic, Natalia. Britain took over Pietermaritzburg in 1843 and it became the seat of the Natal Colony's administration with the first lieutenant-governor, Martin West, making it his home.
Fort Napier, named after the governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Thomas Napier, was built to house a garrison. In 1893, Natal received responsibility for their own government and an assembly building was built along with the city hall. On 7 June 1893, while Mahatma Gandhi was on his way to Pretoria, a white man objected to Gandhi's presence in a first-class carriage. Despite Gandhi having a first-class ticket, he was ordered by the conductor to move to the van compartment at the end of the train: he refused, he was removed from the train at Pietermaritzburg. Shivering through the winter night in the waiting room of the station, Gandhi made the momentous decision to stay on in South Africa and fight the racial discrimination against Indians there. Out of that struggle emerged his unique version of Satyagraha. Today, a bronze statue of Gandhi stands in the city centre. In 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed, Natal became a province of the Union, Pietermaritzburg remained the capital.
During apartheid, the city was segregated into various sections. 90% of the Indian population was moved to the suburb of Northdale while most of its Zulu inhabitants were moved to the neighbouring township of Edendale and white inhabitants were moved out of those areas. There exist two interpretations about the origin of the city's name. One is that it was named after Piet Gert Maritz, two Voortrekker leaders; the other is that it was named after Piet Retief alone, since his full name was Pieter Maurits Retief. In this interpretation the original name was "Pieter Maurits Burg" transliterated to the current name. Retief in fact never reached Pietermaritzburg and was killed by Dingane, successor to Shaka, king of the Zulus. Maritz died of illness on 23 September 1838 near the present-day town of Estcourt, some hundreds of kilometres northwest of Pietermaritzburg; this was after the battle with the Zulus at Bloukranz, Maritz did not reach the Pietermaritzburg area. In 1938, the city announced that the second element Maritz should honour Gert Maritz.
At the time of the rise of the Zulu Empire, the site, to become Pietermaritzburg was called Umgungundlovu. This is popularly translated from the Zulu as "Place of the Elephant", although it could be translated to mean "The elephant wins". Umgungundlovu is thus thought to be the site of some Zulu king's victory since "Elephant" is a name traditionally taken by the Zulu monarch. Legend has it that Shaka had his warriors hunt elephant there to sell the ivory to English traders at Durban. Today, the town is still called by its Voortrekker name, although the municipality of which it is part bears the Zulu name; the University of Natal was founded in 1910 as the Natal University College and extended to Durban in 1922. The two campuses were incorporated into the University of Natal in March 1949, it became a major voice in the struggle against apartheid and was one of the first universities in the country to provide education to black students. It became the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 1 January 2004.
The first newspaper in Natal, the Natal Witness, was published in 1846. The 46 hectare; the city hall, the largest red-brick building in the Southern Hemisphere, was destroyed by fire in 1895, but was rebuilt in 1901. It houses the largest pipe organ built by Brindley & Foster; the British built a concentration camp here during the Second Boer War to house Boer women and children. During the Second World War, Italian prisoners of war were housed in Pietermaritzburg. During their stay, they built a church. In 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested in the nearby town of Howick to the north of Pietermaritzburg; the arrest marked the beginning of Nelson Mandela's 27 years of imprisonment. A small monument has been erected at the location of his arrest. After his arrest Mandela was taken to the Old Prison in Pietermaritzburg. After a night in the prison, he was taken to Magistrate J. Buys’s office in the old Magistrates Court Building in Commercial Road, was remanded for trial in Johannesburg. Prior to 1994, Pietermaritzburg was the capital of Natal Province.
Following the first post-apartheid elect
South African Police
The South African Police was the national police force and law enforcement agency in South Africa from 1913 to 1994. After South Africa's transition to majority rule in 1994, the SAP was reorganised into the South African Police Service; the South African Police was the successor to the police forces of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Orange River Colony, the Transvaal Colony in law enforcement in South Africa. Proclamation 18 formed the South African Police on 1 April 1913 with the amalgamation of the police forces of the four old colonies after the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910; the first Commissioner of Police was Colonel Theo G Truter with 5,882 men under his command. The SAP policed cities and urban areas, while the South African Mounted Riflemen, a branch of the Union Defence Force, enforced the state's writ in rural areas. During World War I, the SAP took over the Riflemen's jurisdiction, most Riflemen personnel were transferred to the SAP by the end of the 1910s.
By 1926, the South African Mounted Riflemen were disbanded and their duties taken over by the South African Police. In 1939, the SAP took over the South West African Police and became responsible for policing South West Africa, under South African administration at that time. Police officials called on the army for support in emergencies. In turn, one SAP brigade served with the 2nd Infantry Division of the South African Army in North Africa during World War II. After the war, the South African Police joined INTERPOL on 1 January 1948; when the conservative National Party edged out liberal opponents in South Africa's elections in 1948, the new government enacted legislation strengthening the relationship between the police and the military. The police were armed after that when facing unruly or hostile crowds; the Police Act of 1958 broadened the mission of the SAP beyond conventional police functions, such as maintaining law and order and investigating and preventing crime, gave the police extraordinary powers to quell unrest and to conduct counterinsurgency activities.
The Police Amendment Act of 1965 empowered the police to search without warrant any person, vehicle, aircraft, or premise within one mile of any national border and to seize anything found during such a search. This search-and-seize zone was extended to within eight miles of any border in 1979 and to the entire country in 1983. Among the SAP's spies during the apartheid era were the infamous Craig Williamson and his best-known female recruit Olivia Forsyth; the SAP relinquished its responsibility for South West Africa in 1981. It took over the South African Railways Police Force in 1986; the following people have served as the Commissioner of the South African Police: 1913 - 1928 Colonel Sir T. G. Truter 1928 - 1940 Major General I. P. de Villiers 1940 - 1945 Brigadier G. R. C Baston 1945 - 1951 Major General R. J Palmer 1951 - 1954 Major General J. A. Brink 1954 - 1960 Major General C. I. Rademeyer 1960 - 1962 Lt General H. J. du Plooy 1962 - 1968 Lt General J. M. Keevy 1968 - 1971 General J. P. Gous 1971 - 1973 General G.
J. Joubert 1973 - 1975 General T. J. Crous 1975 - 1978 General G. L. Prinsloo 1978 - 1983 General M. C. W. Geldenhuys 1983 - 1987 General P. J. Coetzee 1987 - 1989 General H. G. de Witt 1990 - 1996 General J. V. van der Merwe There were a number of special units within the police. They were formed either to deal with a particular area of crime; the Koevoet, translating into English as'crowbar', but known as the Police Counter-Insurgency Unit or'Operation K' were a major paramilitary police unit in South African-administered South West Africa, now the Republic of Namibia. Active within the Namibian War of Independence from 1979 to 1989, they were held responsible for committing multiple human rights violations, alongside the South West African Police, they were disbanded following Namibian independence in 1989, were replaced by the Special Field Force in modern-day Namibia. Formed following a need to defend the border between South Africa and Rhodesia during the Rhodesian Bush War, the Special Task Force were unofficially founded in 1967, began to be trained to use advanced tactics, such as survival and bush skills, to carry out COIN operations, drastically reduce police casualties - this unit was known as the'Bliksems'.
By 1975, support of creating the Special Task Force reached the Bureau of State Security, following both the Fox Street Siege, in which the police were unable to deal with a hostage crisis at the Israeli embassy in Johannesburg, the outbreak of the conflict in South West Africa, stretching the demand of COIN operatives. Authorization of creating the Specialist Task Force was given, following multiple recommendations, the issues described beforehand; this unit is still in action in modern-day South Africa. Formed in 1992 in the run-up to the 1994 South African election following the end of Apartheid,'Division: Internal Stability' were tasked with the important role of combating violence in the turbulent years leading up to and after the elections; the unit consisted of 41 divisions, proved detrimental to preventing thousands of killings during major political violence. During South Africa's rule under apartheid, the SAP operated to quell civil unrest amongst the country's disenfranchised non-white majority.
During emergencies they were assisted by the military. Beyond the conventional police functions of upholding order and solving crime, the SAP employed counter-insurgency and intimidation tactics against anti-apartheid activists and critics of the white minority government. From 1961 to 1990, a total of 67
Cry, the Beloved Country
Cry, the Beloved Country is a novel by Alan Paton, published in 1948. American publisher Bennett Cerf remarked at that year's meeting of the American Booksellers Association that there had been "only three novels published since the first of the year that were worth reading… Cry, The Beloved Country, The Ides of March, The Naked and the Dead."Two cinema adaptations of the book have been made, the first in 1951 and the second in 1995. The novel was adapted as a musical called Lost in the Stars, with a book by the American writer Maxwell Anderson and music composed by the German emigre Kurt Weill. In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg, he is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned.
In Johannesburg, Kumalo is warmly welcomed by Msimangu, the priest who sent him the letter, given comfortable lodging by Mrs. Lithebe, a Christian woman who feels that helping others is her duty. Kumalo visits Gertrude, now a prostitute and liquor seller, persuades her to come back to Ndotsheni with her young son. A more difficult quest follows, when Kumalo and Msimangu begin searching the labyrinthine metropolis of Johannesburg for Absalom, they visit Kumalo's brother, who has become a successful businessman and politician, he directs them to the factory where his son and Absalom once worked together. One clue leads to another, as Kumalo travels from place to place, he begins to see the gaping racial and economic divisions that are threatening to split his country. Kumalo discovers that his son has spent time in a reformatory and that he has gotten a girl pregnant. Meanwhile, the newspapers announce that Arthur Jarvis, a prominent white crusader for racial justice, has been murdered in his home by a gang of burglars.
Kumalo and Msimangu learn that the police are looking for Absalom, Kumalo's worst suspicions are confirmed when Absalom is arrested for the murder. Absalom confesses to the crime but states that two others, including John's son, aided him and that he did not intend to murder Jarvis. With the help of friends, Kumalo obtains a lawyer for Absalom and attempts to understand what his son has become. John, makes arrangements for his own son's defense though this split will worsen Absalom’s case; when Kumalo tells Absalom's pregnant girlfriend what has happened, she is saddened by the news, but she joyfully agrees to his proposal that she marry his son and return to Ndotsheni as Kumalo's daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, in the hills above Ndotsheni, Arthur Jarvis' father, James Jarvis, tends his bountiful land and hopes for rain; the local police bring him news of his son's death, he leaves for Johannesburg with his wife. In an attempt to come to terms with what has happened, Jarvis reads his son's articles and speeches on social inequality and begins a radical reconsideration of his own prejudices.
He and Kumalo meet for the first time by accident, after Kumalo has recovered from his shock, he expresses sadness and regret for Jarvis' loss. Both men attend Absalom’s trial, a straightforward process that ends with the death penalty for Absalom and an acquittal for the two other defendants. Kumalo arranges for Absalom to marry the girl who bears his child, they bid farewell; the morning of his departure, Kumalo rouses his new family to bring them back to Ndotsheni, only to find that Gertrude has disappeared. Kumalo is now aware of how his people have lost the tribal structure that once held them together and returns to his village troubled by the situation, it turns out. Arthur Jarvis' young son befriends Kumalo; as the young boy and the old man become acquainted, James Jarvis becomes involved with helping the struggling village. He donates milk at first, makes plans for a dam and hires an agricultural expert to demonstrate newer, less devastating farming techniques; when Jarvis’ wife dies and his congregation send a wreath to express their sympathy.
Just as the bishop is on the verge of transferring Kumalo, Jarvis sends a note of thanks for the wreath and offers to build the congregation a new church, Kumalo is permitted to stay in his parish. On the evening before his son's execution, Kumalo goes into the mountains to await the appointed time in solitude. On the way, he encounters Jarvis, the two men speak of the village, of lost sons, of Jarvis' bright young grandson, whose innocence and honesty have impressed both men; when Kumalo is alone, he weeps for his son’s death and clasps his hands in prayer as dawn breaks over the valley. Stephen Kumalo: A 69-year-old Zulu priest who attempts to find his family in Johannesburg, to reconstruct the disintegrating tribe in his village. Theophilus Msimangu: A priest from Johannesburg who helps Kumalo find his son Absalom. John Kumalo: Stephen's brother, who denies the tribal validity and becomes a spokesman for the new racial movement in the city. Absalom Kumalo: Stephen's son who left home to look for Stephen's sister Gertrude, who murders Arthur Jarvis.
Gertrude Kumalo: The young sister of Stephen who becomes a prostitute in Johannesburg and leads a dissolute life. James Jarvis: A wealthy landowner whose son, Arthur, is murdered, he forgives the Kumalos. Arthur Jarvis: Murdered by Absalom Kumalo, he is the son of James Jarvis, he does not appear in the no
